


call me a sinner, call me a saint

by callunavulgari



Series: Holiday Writing Challenge '12 [25]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Christmas, Fluff, M/M, Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 07:57:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/607581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Will it hurt?” a little girl asks him quietly, wheezing faintly, tubes in her nose and needles in her veins. The machine next to her is beeping erratically, and Loki caresses her hand in his, pausing in his story. His eyes are sad as the black seeps from her hand and into his veins; kissing the top of her head and breathing, “Not anymore, love.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	call me a sinner, call me a saint

**Author's Note:**

> Day 25 of the Holiday Writing Challenge on tumblr [over here](http://giraffe-tier.tumblr.com/post/35469673249/winter-drawing-writing-challenge). Prompt was 'trade gifts/donate '. I'm going to be busy tomorrow, so you guys get this one early.

Tony Stark is many, many things, most of which he’s let the world know up front, but time conscientious has never been one of them. Pepper has been with him through the bad times, the good times (few and far between they may be), and through all the quiet little moments in between. Sometimes she thinks that she knows Tony better than he know himself, and other times she really believes that she does.  
  
He makes stupid mistakes often, but she’s never held them against him in the long run. He has enough of the world doing that for her.  
  
So she doesn’t hold the Loki thing against him when it first comes out. She does what she does best—puts out the fires and picks up the pieces of Tony left behind.  
  
It’s a mess for months, the headlines full of accusations that Tony’s a traitor—that he’s gone to the dark side—that he should have the suit taken away from him for good, because if he’s fucking a supervillain, clearly that means he’s going to become one.  
  
She knows Tony better than anyone else in the world, so when he comes home stinking of sex and booze, she knows to run him a hot bath and sit on the toilet seat beside him with a good book to make sure he doesn’t drown himself. For the most part, she ignores his ramblings, but this time, she leaves the book behind and listens as his voice stutters over what might be words.  
  
“I just— Pep, I don’t understand,” he tells her, sinking into the water up to his chin. Like this, he looks very small and very lonely, and she remembers why she’d wanted to be that person for him—that person who makes him light up like he’s discovered the mystery of time travel. She also remembers why they hadn’t been good for each other. Pepper has always been smart, but she isn’t Tony-smart. She isn’t like Bruce who can hold a discussion on thermonuclear fusion with Tony for hours on end, and she knows that he wants that. Not Bruce in particular, because Tony is very protective of the few friends he has, and she has yet to see him fuck one up because he couldn’t keep it in his pants. The closest he’d come to it had been with her, and when he’d realized that, _he’d_ been the one to break it off with her.  
  
“It isn’t worth losing you,” he’d told her over far-too expensive food and wine, and she’d looked at him carefully, shrugged, and downed her wine.  
  
She misses him sometimes—misses the way he’d curl into her when he actually managed to crawl into bed with her at a decent hour—but the thing is, she still has him.  
  
What she does know is that Loki of all people does make him light up. At this point, she’s seen enough of Loki to last her a lifetime—enough to know about whether or not alien gods are circumcised, which incidentally also tells her too much about Thor—but she’s also seen him in the quiet moments. She’s seen Loki pad through the kitchen in slinky robes on bare feet to get Tony water in the middle of the night. She’s seen him smile at her as he cooked all three of them breakfast, his hair a mess and his eyes soft. She’s seen his skin go blue and his eyes red—seen the fear in his eyes as she looked at him.  
  
And she knows what the rest of the world doesn’t know—not yet. She knows that Loki has a heart, and that it’s large enough to have the capacity to love.  
  
Which is why she just laughs when she manages to rope him into helping her get the signatures required from Tony for the Christmas donations and he takes it a step further, convincing Tony to personally make appearances at children’s hospitals and orphanages all over the country.  
  
It’s more than she would expect from the man—god, whatever—who destroyed a good portion of New York not three years prior. But, she supposes, watching them as they bicker over cookie cutter shapes, it’s possible that this is his way of atoning for his crimes.  
  
The media never manage to make it past the hospital lobbies, so they don’t see how he tells a story about stardust and nebulas to a girl who might not even make it into the new year. They don’t see how he makes light dance across the knuckles of boys and girls, creating graceful green butterflies and leaping gazelles with a wave of his hand. They don’t see how he pats their bald heads gently, or the way the pain seeps out of them and into his hands, black spreading through his veins, making him grimace as their pain hits _him_.  
  
He’s good with children, she thinks, and when they hug him—their eyes bright and happy—he hugs them back, so very gently, something like wonder in his eyes.  
  
It’s enough for her. He may not be like Captain America, good in every way, but he’s a lot like Tony. Brittle and cold on the outside, hiding that warm center.  
  
“Will it hurt?” a little girl asks him quietly, wheezing faintly, tubes in her nose and needles in her veins. The machine next to her is beeping erratically, and Loki caresses her hand in his, pausing in his story. His eyes are sad as the black seeps from her hand and into his veins; kissing the top of her head and breathing, “Not anymore, love.”  
  
He weeps afterwards, sequestered away in a bathroom as Tony takes over the storytelling. Pepper is also many things, but she is not heartless. She wipes the tears from his face and gives him a sad smile.  
  
“Why are you being so nice?” he asks her, his voice trying to go mean and failing spectacularly.  
  
She wipes the last of his tears away and fiddles in her handbag for something to cover the redness of his eyes, but he stills her hand, and with a wave of his own, his face is clear again.  
  
“Because villains don’t take the pain away from dying children on Christmas,” she tells him, patting the back of his hand. “And they certainly don’t cry over children who may not see tomorrow.”  
  
He looks at her wonderingly. “What makes you think this is not some elaborate plot?”  
  
She shakes her head. “You’re a good liar, Loki, I’ll admit that. But I’ve been at Tony’s side for half my life. I know liars. Even you aren’t this good.”  
  
He sniffs, as if offended, but his eyes are soft as he looks at her. “You’re a wise woman, Pepper Potts,” he says after a moment, offering her a hesitant smile.  
  
“And you, Loki, are a good man,” she whispers. “He’s better with you at his side. I don’t care what the papers say. They didn’t convince Tony to spend his Christmas in children’s wards, you did. You make him light up like one of the stars from your stories and that is enough for me.”  
  
.  
  
The headlines the day after Christmas range from accusations of Loki trying to create an army of children to some morbid ones accusing him of necromancy.  
  
Her favorite though, is the one that has a picture of Loki making unicorns dance around a little girl’s head, his smile soft as Tony watches from his side.  
  
The headline: “Loki redeemed?”  
  
She rolls up the newspaper and smiles.


End file.
